


say you won't let go.

by commonemergency



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2010 timeline, Anxiety, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, School Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 20:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12153867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: Dan worries too much about school and the future, but that's okay because Phil has sleepytime tea and a safe place to stay.





	say you won't let go.

**Author's Note:**

> it's almost like i'm writing other things to avoid writing my pbb... how unusual of me. 
> 
> actually this fic happened because i had a migraine and my daily crisis about my own school and reading a lot of medical textbooks that don't make a lot of sense, but hey it's a learning process.

One day he won’t feel so sleep deprived, Dan tells himself as he looks over a paragraph in a law book that he’s swears he’s read a thousand times, but he just can’t seem to retain the information. They have a test tomorrow and he has to nail it but it’s late and there’s only so much coffee he can drink, but he can fall asleep right now. He knows that he should be heading to his dorm, it’s late and Phil has to do some things tomorrow morning and he doesn’t want to be bother but he also doesn’t want to live either. 

The sound of a cup being placed on the table by his head makes him snap his eyes open and he sees that Phil has already made him a cup of tea. He smiles down at Dan and places a hand on his shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “It’s a sleepy time tea,” he sits next to Dan and grabs the textbook and highlights it for Dan to remember to read and places a sticky note so he can remember his place and then closes it. 

“Come on,” He rubs Dan’s back and it feels really nice and assuring and Dan kind of just wants to stay in this moment a little while longer. There’s a headache- or maybe a migraine? He doesn’t know, but it’s prominent and his left eye is hurting pretty bad and his vision has gone a little blurry from a mixture of tiredness and closing one eye to focus. 

“Drink that and let’s go to bed,” Phil persists, and Dan looks at him again and nods his head, grabbing the mug and taking a few sips of it. There’s a part of him that wants to cry, he wants to do well in this but there’s another part of him that’s struggling with the fact that he doesn’t want to learn this because when will he ever use it? He doesn’t want to be a lawyer -- but then that ever growing of anxiety of, _if not a lawyer, then what?_ It’s not that it was particularly hard for him to understand these concepts, sure the reading was a little boring he just wasn’t motivated. It was a constant cycle of not knowing what to do and being pulled in other directions. 

“A couple more sips,” Phil encourages again and Dan gives him a look that says, _a couple more sips of sleepy time tea isn’t gonna make me automatically go to sleep or take away this anxiety._

Phil knows that, it’s just the thought of it that really counts, often thinking back to the times during school that his mother would place a cup of sleepytime tea when Phil had been up studying in the late hours of the night when he just needed to go to bed now, wake up early in the morning and get it done. Those are the fond memories of school that he carries with him, the warmth of a mother that was looking out for her son. 

“Is that enough for you?” Dan teases, taking a few more sips and Phil looks, speculating it before shrugging. “Yeah. Yeah I suppose so,” and he gets up, grabbing Dan by the hand and he turns off the light to the kitchen and they walk to Phil’s bedroom. 

Phil grabs one of his bigger and baggier shirts and throws it to Dan who catches it. Dan stares down at it as if it’ll give him the answers to life’s biggest questions. God, he’s so tired, he doesn’t want to lift his arms. He sighs heavily, the kind of exhausted sigh that you do when things get to be too much. Phil hears it and must read his mind because he walks over to his boyfriend and looks at him for a second before nodding and lifting the shirt over Dan’s head and helping him change into the other shirt. 

“Do you want me to change your pants?” Phil asks lightly and Dan smirks at him a little. 

“You perv,” Dan jokes but shakes his head, and it hurts to do that, but he eventually unbuttons his pants and slowly takes them off and throws them on the ground and kind of looks at Phil as if what to do next. He didn’t feel alive, or didn’t feel real and it wasn’t scaring him it just made him feel a little uneasy. 

“Bed,” Phil takes his hand again and they collapse on the bed and Phil pulls Dan in who’s a bit taller, a bit bigger, but tonight feels so small. 

“I’ve set an alarm to wake us both up a little earlier to work on some of your stuff before your test,” Phil whispers to Dan, who has now placed his hands over Phil’s. 

“Okay,” Dan says with a yawn and it makes them both laugh. 

There are some days when it’s too much. The fear of the unknown was too much. There are days where Dan wishes that there was some guide when it came to life because he felt like he was doing it all wrong. He was constantly being torn by things that didn’t make sense, and it felt like he was trying to learn a different language looking at his textbooks sometimes because there are things he didn’t understand and he knows that he could get it, he was smart, just not the best when it came to time management when he wanted to do other things. He looked at Phil sometimes and felt so inadequate, he had already completed everything he needed to do and got his degree and whenever someone asked them what they did and where they went to school Dan had awkwardly stood there and smiled as they listed their set of accomplishments and all Dan could say was that he had gotten an unconditional offer at University. He wanted someone to be proud of him, even proud of the small accomplishments that seemed minimal and he _knows_ deep down that at least Phil was proud of him, he just hadn’t said it. Dan hated that he sometimes needed that kind of confirmation but he did. 

“School is exhausting,” Dan muttered, getting in that point where he could fall asleep. 

“I know,” Phil held him a little tighter, “but don’t think about the big picture. Just focus on one thing at a time.” He knew that it was easier said than done but after his parents drilling that into him he eventually started to practice it. 

It wasn’t the advice Dan wanted to hear, but he was grateful all the same. 

“Love you,” Phil kissed the back of his head and drew circles on the places he could reach just to remind him that he was there. Over the course of knowing and being with Dan he was learning Dan’s love language and what worked with Dan when it came to calming him down. He didn’t always show that he was hurt about things that haunted him, other times Phil felt like he could read him like a book. 

Dan, though half asleep, smiled hearing him say that he loved him, even after being mute most of the night, and babbling on about things that seemed trivial, and groaning when he didn’t understand and saying he didn’t need help, and pushing Phil away when he didn’t want to be touched, he really felt it, and he knew that it was because he hadn’t been sleeping well the past couple of weeks, but he could cry about 

“I love you too.” The words didn’t seem so scary to say anymore as they did the first time. He was glad that in _his_ little world where a lot of things didn’t make sense, and the amount of confusion he had about a future and _where_ he’d be in it, that this, right here, being in Phil’s arms did make sense. It was a steady and consistent thing to an anxious heart. 

“Tomorrow we’ll wake up and try again.” It’s the last thing Dan hears before he eventually drifts off into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos appreciated! 
> 
> talk to me on tumblr/twitter: @nihilismdan.


End file.
